


dying well

by archaeologies



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games), Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma - Fandom
Genre: Based on a song, Fic for a friend!!, MAJOR VLR AND 999 SPOILERS THO, Mentions of Character Death, elaborate revenge plots, etc - Freeform, feat me being bitter about esper retcon, light ztd spoilers i guess but not really, morphic shenanigans, typical ze stuff, zeropei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-11-03
Packaged: 2018-08-28 18:10:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8456626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archaeologies/pseuds/archaeologies
Summary: If he’s going to utilise his ability as a receiver, he realises, it would be best to be surrounded by pain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for juno

The hardest part is working out how to make the morphogenetic field work to his advantage. 

He isn’t like her. He can’t utilise it, can’t make it do what he wants, can’t bend it, can’t move with it, can’t constantly access it. He isn’t like Klim. He can’t jump through it, can’t SHIFT his being into a better future, a better past, a better present. He isn’t like any of them, isn’t like Crash Keys, he can’t see through it without it’s permission, and he can’t see what people don’t want him to see. He can only receive. He can’t transmit. He can’t ask the morphic field to show him things, events, people. He has to tune it, tune himself to it, understand what it can show him, what he’s able to pick up from it, and that takes time. A few months of serious work, which allows him to develop a plan. 

People want to share things with others, he learns. People want to share their pain. Whether it’s because they believe it will alleviate their suffering, or because they want pity, sympathy, acknowledgement, it’s always their pain that they want to talk about most, that they want others to know about, that leaks into the cracks between conscious and unconscious, that he’s able to pick up most easily through their resonance. So if he’s going to utilise his ability as a receiver, he realises, it would be best to be surrounded by pain. 

He remembers what Cradle Pharmaceutical discovered, what Crash Keys utilised in two separate games; esper abilities are strongest when the users are at their most afraid. 

Finding her isn’t hard. Her entire body is practically made from that energy, from the resonance. The morphic field courses through her body, in her blood, in her heart, in her lungs, and he has been finely programmed by nine hours of nine hours of saving her, of fighting for her, over and over again, in an infinite loop. His body spent half a day on that boat; his mind has spent eternity there. He remembers it in hazy nightmares, in moments where he isn’t sure whether he’s awake or not. 

He remembers how she feels. He remembers how sharing her thoughts feels, he remembers her unique morphogenetic code. She emits it now, so strongly, that he can feel it from the other side of the world. The field is so desperate for someone to pick up on the simultaneous infinite realities she’s living, she’s transmitting, that he can almost pinpoint her exact location, track her every move. 

It’s comforting, in some ways, to know that she still exists, that the events in Building-Q really happened, but mostly, it’s convenient. It means he doesn’t have to look for her, doesn’t have to hunt her down, and almost makes his plans fall into place easier. 

She’s working to stop something - some Radical-6 nonsense - at the Mars Mission Test Site he vaguely remembers one of his lecturers mentioning at university, before he dropped out. She’s infiltrating the project, bringing two SHIFTers in with her. She’s over-complicating things, he realises, as he focuses on trying to pick up on what’s going on, or rather what’s going to go on, at the site. But she’s making things so simple for him. She’s providing him with the perfect setting, the perfect prompt.

He sends in his application for the programme. He makes sure that the others chosen are transmitters. His methods of selection are unconventional, but nothing outside of making her understand really matters to him at this point, so he has nothing to lose if a little blood is spilt. 

He almost feels sorry for the nurse, Diana. She seems keener than most to transmit her pain to him, and there’s a lot of it. He thinks he’ll steer her towards a future where she’s able to survive, but wonders whether living through something like this is actually worse than falling from it. After all, in his experience, as the Junpei Tenmyouji who got out of Building-Q, who got Akane Kurashiki off of the Gigantic, surviving a nonary game has been worse than competing in it. 

He doesn’t know when the concept of a Decision Game hits him, but when it does, he knows it’s perfect. He’s able to manipulate the morphic field enough to hide himself, his futures, from her (as if she cares enough to look), and he thinks that’s what inspires him. She’s grown rich, arrogant, lazy, on the promise of being able to see everything, understand everything. She’s careless, she doesn’t have to work the field for information. It presents everything to her readily. 

How hard, he thinks, must it be to be able to see each and every reality, but unable to remember which one you’re living in? To be able to record and document the steps that take you from one past into another future, but not know which steps have already been taken? 

Calling himself Zero is only natural. It’s the name of the only person who is able to cause so much suffering. 

He sees Diana tug at Klim’s arm in one reality, desperate, begging through tears for him to promise her that she’ll come back, that she won’t leave them there, that she’ll save them, and he laughs. She never comes back, he wants to scream. She doesn’t know how to return. She doesn’t care enough, you’re just the means to an end, whatever faith she showed you, whatever mask she donned that makes you want to believe she’s coming back, it’s not her true face. The real Akane Kurashiki decks herself in robes and a gas mask and leaves you. She leaves you she leaves you she leaves you. 

Klim doesn’t make Diana any promises, and spouts empty half-truths. Something about that is satisfying. Not even the people she trusts to protect the world will trust her back. 

He reclines. The rest of C-Team are sleeping. He thinks he could end it all now, but wants to let his play perform itself to the climax instead of destroying everything in the interval. 

In one reality, he thinks, turning to where Carlos is collapsed on the floor, she figures it out. She figures everything out, and Carlos stops her from doing anything rash, and it bites them both as the bracelets put them to sleep and remove the last ninety minutes from their memories, and eventually, he dies by her hands. Unless he says... unless he promises her he didn’t... do something. In which case, Carlos kills her. He’s picking up that fragment of future now, from Carlos’ sleeping body. He supposes that’s the route they’re heading towards. He closes his eyes, works with the field to see what he needs to do to ensure that future happens, and discovers, with a shock strong enough to bring his eyes open, that he has to die. He snorts a laugh. It was something he’d considered, of course, because the morphogenetic field will allow him to experience her suffering over and over again before he breathed his last, but the fact that she would kill for him, die for him...

He shakes his head. He doesn’t need thoughts like that getting in the way of his revenge, getting in the way of everything. Akane Kurashiki does not care about him. Akane Kurashiki does not care about anyone but herself, and she has to face the consequences of her actions. 

There’s a room he’s prepared for D-Team, inspired by her, and he wonders for a moment, if perhaps it would be better to move them over to it. He thinks Carlos would fit nicely in a chair made for Klim, and wonders what would panic her more; waking up to find herself in an incinerator, or Junpei. He wonders if she would make the same effort to save him that he did, if she would do anything to stop him from meeting the fate that he prevented for her, or if she would let him burn to protect a stranger, if she would let him burn to erase the only person who could connect her and Zero, who could share that she has a history of running murder games. He plays with it for a second, thinks maybe he should re-arrange his plans, substitute D-Team with C-Team. 

How satisfying it would feel to let her burn, like he should have last year, like she should have all those years ago. 

His lips are trembling, a little, at the thought of killing her. His eyes feel warm and wet, and his eyelashes are sticking to his skin. He shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. He’s not sad, is he? Maybe he just hadn’t considered the possibility of being properly responsible for her death, yet. Maybe he was just too focused on being indirectly responsible that he hadn’t properly considered actually doing this himself.

He clears his throat. Things are running smoothly. He can’t get distracted now, especially not by whatever the fuck this is. There isn’t a single reality where she cares about him. There never has been a reality where she cared about him. He needs to get a grip. Kanny, June, Akane, whatever disguise she comes up with for herself, it’s fake, it’s fake, it’s not made up, it’s not real, and he has planned this for far too long to let the illusion of someone like her giving a shit about him fuck things up and get in the way. 

She stirs in her sleep, and the morphic field lets him visit a far future, a distant future, where she’s older and colder than she is now, and he’s spent years searching for her, loving her. He snarls. Pathetic. What idiot could love someone who strung them up like she did? Who used them the way she used him? In this future, where he’s old and happy and has a son and a bolo tie, in this future, he’s a fucking fool. His mouth tastes like bile at the possibility of there being a reality where he tricks himself into caring about her, into believing she could be persuaded to care back. 

Some part of him must care though, he realises as his stomach plummets into the soles of his shoes, and an icy fever creeps over him. Some part of him must care, otherwise he wouldn’t have put so much effort into this. He wouldn’t have meticulously planned the perfect way for her to suffer, wouldn’t have agonisingly stretched the limitations of his mind and body to access the future she fears the most. He tries to shake the thought off, but he can’t. He just keeps looking back at her, where she’s sleeping. She has no idea. She has no idea. 

This is all for her. Crash Keys too, maybe, because that shitty organisation’s existence pisses him off. How like her to name a secret agency after herself, he thinks with a laugh. He frowns as he supposes he’s right; he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths for someone he didn’t care about, but loving and loathing are two very different emotions.

When they come to, in the showers, she’s determined not to let anyone get hurt, or die. He wonders how much of it is an act. In the reality where he pushes the button, she refuses to speak to him for the rest of the timespan, except to ask how he could do it, and question who he is. How dare she? How dare she? She doesn’t make him any less angry in the reality where Carlos pushes the button either. She keeps going on about how it’s not right, how they can’t do this to the others, and Junpei’s blood boils with rage, because it was fine for her a year ago to play with people’s lives, but not for him, he can’t do it, Carlos can’t, it’s only okay for Akane Kurashiki, because Akane Kurashiki is the only person who matters. 

In another room, in another reality, she tells him she wishes she could have worn a better-fitting kimono to New Year’s with him. He shakes that one from his thoughts. 

Akane Kurashiki is going to die here, at DCOM. He knows that. He’s decided that. They’ve all decided that. He doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Radical-6, about the end of the world, about anything else but his game. He’s going to make her pick how she dies, going to let every possible death filter through the morphogenetic field, going to let her experience all the ways she could die over and over again, just like she made him do, just like he had to. And then she’s going to die. He’s going to let her decide how it happens; that’s what a Decision Game would suggest. Her future is in her own hands. She’s powerless to stop it, no matter what she might trick herself into believing being an esper means. 

Life isn’t fair. A twelve year old girl burns to death after undergoing dangerous and disturbing experimentation. She didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t fair for her to die like that, and it wasn’t fair of her to put anyone else through the same thing to save herself. It wasn’t fair of her to inflict everything that destroyed her on an unsuspecting boy who hadn’t spoken to her since... well, since she died, he supposes. 

Life isn’t fair, but Junpei Tenmyouji is going to make it so. He is going to restore balance, restore justice, performing punishment. He is judge, jury and executioner. He is going to put things right. 

He does not allow himself to consider that scared little girl, crying out for his help, that scared little girl who risked her life, gave her life, for a doll with his name. He does not allow himself to consider that what he went through last year was the actions of that little girl, was her terrified hands clawing at one last chance of life. 

Junpei has worked too hard to get this far. There is no going back. Nothing Junpei Tenmyouji thinks or feels can change that he is Zero now, and Zero’s game will not be won until Akane Kurashiki has met the end she deserves, the end she wrote for herself one year ago, by putting Junpei through hell and back over and over and over again. 

When Akane Kurashiki falls, so will the curtain, and Junpei’s performance will come to it’s well deserved end. 

**Author's Note:**

> prompt : zeropei songfic to joywave's song of the same name
> 
> interested in my writing ? find out more at : http://megidolaon.tumblr.com/post/146309832661 or contact me here, or on my tumblr (@megidolaon) or twitter (@runicshield) if you have any questions
> 
> doing nanowrimo this year? why not add me (nanowrimo.org/participants/archaeologies) to find out more info about me and my writing ! send me a message and we can support each other as we work towards our goals !


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